I got a P1S as a Christmas present for me and my wife. For now, my plan is to block its internet connection and stop using the Bambu app altogether. When/if it his stops working for me, what does the community recommend as a replacement for newbies like me, or future newbs who haven’t made this mistake?
You must log in or register to comment.
Now that this is shipping, I’m hoping it gets more exposure and reviews online:
I’m kinda surprised there haven’t been hands on reviews yet. I’m also kinda glad cause it means they aren’t sending out special review units to everyone just to get good stories out.
I want a Core One, but am holding out for the kit version, which I haven’t seen anything announcing a release date. I can’t really blame them, I’m guessing 75% or more of their printers are sold prebuilt, but I enjoy getting my hands dirty and knowing exactly how my printers work.
I have a Qidi X-Plus 4. There are a lot of reviews online raving about its reliability, how it’s the first production-ready printer that’s also affordable for hobbyists. It’s also got Klipper firmware, which is open, so it can’t be locked down the way the Bambu ones are.
My old printer is a 10 year old prusa clone kit, which I wrestled with the whole time I had it. Compared to that, the Qidi is a dream.
If you’re on 110v power, make sure you get the fixed relay board. The original one can’t handle the higher amperage of the lower voltage power.
There are a lot of reviews online raving about its reliability,
The way you set up this sentence, I was expecting a huge BUT at the end
Lol, I just didn’t want to attest to it myself since I’m not really qualified, but it does seem very reliable.
Seconding Qidi, I’ve been very happy with my q1 pro. They also have chamber heaters which makes it much easier to print large ABS or nylon prints.
A friend of mine has been gifted an x smart 3, he’s having quite some trouble with it… Granted, it’s his first printer…
I saw this coming a mile away. i made the right choice of printer :/
Really tho their software has already been broken into, it’s on repair.wiki. You can fix your printer
Unfortunately an heir apparent isn’t readily… Apparent in my eyes. All have tradeoffs. To be fair, Bambu did too but hid it better from most consumers.
Qidi isn’t terrible, and they have a decent track record. Their use of klipper is a big plus as well. But multi material is still a promise with no release or reviews, and they have had some duds in their history.
Prusa is an obvious option, and previously wore the crown. They’re a good bit more expensive, but perhaps that’s the cost of a highly ethical company that is deeply invested in the community. MMU is well understood and works great, but isn’t integrated in their latest printers yet.
Voron is amazing but absolutely still not for beginners. Besides that they lack for absolutely nothing. Some kits are approaching the user friendliness of pre built, but care and feeding is generally a more technical endeavor.
Creality is a good place to start generally, but lacks for features.
Long story short, if a friend approached me and demanded a recommendation, I’d push a casual user to Qidi, a demanding user to a Prusa, and a tinkerer to a Creality with the understanding I’ll be printing voron parts in a year or two
I’ve been wanting to build a Voron for ages, I’ve modified an i3 clone from anycubic to such an extent it’s not reflective of it’s original quality at all. But I find the cost and technical challenge a little too high. Recently Sovol brought out an inspired by and using open source basis copy of the Voron 2.4. Sovol SV08. It’s looks quite reasonably priced, but it’s still a big chunk of what I would have spent on the Voron budget, and only needs reassembly out of the box not a full build. I’m just not hearing enough of how they run to be inspired yet. SV08
I’m about to start building the CNC version of the 0.2. All my parts are in, and it will be my first build.
Was going to do the 350mm 2.4, but when I realized how fast the 0.2 heats up and prints, and that most of the things I make fit on it, I decided to start there first.
On that basis I have been squinting at the LDO micron. Similar prices for kits as the 0.2 but with a 180x180 print bed. Micron ‘mini 2.4’
Having gone through the Voron build, I would call it long vs hard. I am mechanically inclined and have crimped wiring before though.
Mechanically, if you’re not intimidated by IKEA furniture you’ll be fine. You do need a largeish flat surface to get the 2020 rails to all be flat when you snug them up, but a kitchen counter will do if you don’t have anything else.
Wiring wise, if you’re willing to spring for a ratcheting crimper with the correct die size for your terminal and wire gauge it becomes foolproof. If you use a non-ratcheting type grab some extra wire and terminals to practice on. Too lose = poor connection. Too tight = you’ll break the wires.
The Voron docs are pretty easy to follow and their forums are pretty solid for help. They also have a discord, but I’m old and prefer BBS style posts.
I’ve built my first Voron self-sourced, then got a good deal on an unused V0.2 kit, I’ve got to say that the LDO kit was like child’s play, so I have to recommend them.
BOM in a box is absolutely they way to go IMO. I ordered a customizable kit from West 3D and it contained everything I needed and more.
Yeah but LDO had the wires pre-made and everything, custom PCBs etc
Mine also came with premade harnesses and all the necessary PCBs. Granted, I chose to cut the harnesses down in length so everything under the bed was a bit cleaner.
Yeah but many kits aren’t like that, so the less… electrically inclined should be wary
You could extract the private keys from your printer
https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Reverse_Engineering_Bambu_Connect
Get a Prusa. I too made the error buing chinese crap (Ender 3 v2 in my case). I didn’t have the cloud problem but i had to tinker soo much till it actually worked.
You pay more for a Prusa, but then you actually have tested and open hard- and software that works and can’t be taken away from you.
Wait I missed something. What happened with bambulabs?
Might be this?
Oh that’s not very poggers.
Are you within the EU?
Hi,
sorry for hijacking the comment thread,
for those that are in EU (lets say they order via amazon.de)
what would You(also accepting anyones recommendations) recommend?If you ordered within their return period return it. Besides that, wait, at the moment
The sad reality is that we are going to see more and more printer companies building up walled gardens. There is money in models and the end goal is going to be one model site per slicer per manufacturer. There will still be the open source build your own printers but… there is a reason everyone recommended a Bambu over one of those.
As of right now? Qidi are pretty awesome in the semi-proprietary space and have a good track record of releasing the g-code macros required to interface with their printers (e.g. chamber temperature controls). Time will tell what they do with their multi-material solution though.
I don’t think we will reach the point of walled gardens for finding/downloading STLs. A lot of us are massive nerds and someone will stand up another STL host. There’s also GitHub, but without a STL aggregator it does kind of stink.
Most of the STLs are also developed by the community and are generally free themselves, although some are trying to create a revenue stream for themselves on places like Cults. I don’t think that’s a walled gardens though - creators are choosing to post their content there and ask $$ for it. Unless someone like Bambu pays top dollar for models, I don’t think they’ll be able to take over the STL market.
For completeness it’s worth mentioning that they posted a response to a lot of the more extreme allegations
https://blog.bambulab.com/updates-and-third-party-integration-with-bambu-connect/
None of which are all that reassuring.
Q: Do you plan to do this bad thing?
A: Definitely not…Yet
Yeah the fact that it’s definitely even come up as a discussion topic isn’t reassuring. Just wanted to add it to the discussion.
